Man, I really like this movie. It’s great, really, really good. Like, I’ve watched it every month at least once for three years. It’s that good. It has some really funny moments… What ones? I don’t want to spoil, but hilarious ones. Like, really good. Oh, here’s your coke. Drink up, I’ve got more.
It feels kind of weird watching it with another person. I tried watching it with a friend once, but she didn’t really like it. Why? Maybe she didn’t get the humor? I don’t know, man, girls are weird like that sometimes.
It’s not playing… The tape player must be having some issues. Jammed or something. Give me a second, I should be able to fix it.
I’ve been thinking about something. What makes something funny? What makes a movie a real knee-slapper… I love that phrase… And what makes a film boring? I’ve watched movie after movie and I didn’t have a clue. It was driving me mad!
I started scouring the web for clues. If there is a place for knowledge like that it’s the internet. You can find the strangest stuff there. Seven squirrels wearing tuxedoes and dancing in unison to some weird music, auction sites for used and soiled underwear and even worse stuff.
I was really getting pissed at that point. It’s been over two years of searching and I still haven’t learned anything. I’ve read multiple books by comics, I’ve analyzed the funniest things I’ve seen in my life and I had nothing still.
Then, one day, I was browsing the web one day when a friend told me about some terrorists killing a journalist, recording it and uploading the video to the internet. Al-Qaeda or some shit. Apparently the vid was going viral and even the really big sites didn’t delete it, coz it was generating so much activity that they made loads of money off of it. Naturally, I looked it up.
There were three black-clad dudes, two of them with AKs and one with a really wicked knife. Like, this big. A machete more-like. With them was another dude, in olive drab and in a balaclava, they were all wearing balaclavas. This one wasn’t armed with anything, but he was reading something off of some paper. Like, a manifesto or some shit, I don’t know.
Next to him was a kneeling man in bright orange, ill-fitting clothes. He looked really calm, like… serene. Tranquil. Wasn’t scared at all, though he looked as if he knew what was going to happen and was content with it, or maybe he thought he was going to make it out of there if he keeps his cool.
Anyway, the olive uniform dude was reading off of the paper. I guess he was the only one in the camp who spoke a lick of English, but he was terrible. He had a lisp and was stuttering, and his accent made everything he said somewhat unintelligible. He said something about fighting repression, liberation and all that jazz, but I couldn’t take him seriously. Then, when he finally finished butchering that text he whispered something to the machete man. He raised his machete and slashed at the journalist’s neck, but his knife got stuck in the dude’s neck. Blood everywhere, journalist now suddenly starts shrieking. The executioner rips the knife out and chops the man again. This shuts the journalist up, he falls to the ground. Knife dude goes into a frenzy and tries really hard to slice the head off, but he can’t! He stops chopping and instead cuts it, like you cut bread. It takes him solid two minutes and he finally does it and picks up the head. The paper dude says something again, but I wasn’t paying attention at that point.
The whole scene was hilarious. The knifing, the reading or the two dudes just awkwardly standing in the back, trying their best to look intimidating but they ended up looking silly.
I browsed the comments, but it was filled with the standard drivel, you know, condolences, saying that all those foreigners should get nuked and all that. Nobody noticed (or at least nobody admitted to noticing) the hilarity of the whole scene. I wrote about that and was almost immediately flooded with “shocked” people writing to me about how “twisted” and “deranged” I was, but I got a few private messages that agreed with me. I knew I wasn’t the only one!
Then it hit me. The humor derives from absurd, right? What’s more absurd than pointless cruelty? Like, you try so hard to be evil, like a cruel sadist or some insurmountable threat but it’s all for naught – people view the vid, get outraged for two minutes and then forget all about it. Nobody does anything about it.
I scoured the web for more things like that. Photos, videos and the like. A baby splashed with acid for moronic cause, a bombing that killed a hundred people but was overshadowed by a shooting that killed two hundred. That kind of stuff.
I went to the darker side of the internet. This time not for clues, or amusement or anything like that. Oh no, this time I was looking for more connoisseurs, people who liked a good laugh. The search took me a long time – turns out people don’t like people with a more thought-out sense of humor. Like, you do
you, let me do me, right? That’s how it should be, but no, moral guardians get all uppity and you can’t laugh at this, can’t laugh at that.
Anyway, I went onto the Dark Web, as some people call it for some reason. It’s not dark, not deep nor is it bad in any way – it’s the fullest expression of free speech you can get! It took me a long time, but after browsing many forums and talking to multiple people I found what I was looking for.
The site was called Amusement Hub. Was – it was taken down for some reason. Anyway, it was an invite-only forum for people like me. Getting in was not simple – I had to use every contact I made over the years, every tool in my possession and all the skills I gained, but I managed to secured a guest account on the forum. All I could do was view and comment on other people’s thread, but that was fine with me at the time.
The people on that forum were real experienced – they posted stuff I have never seen or even heard about before, and all of it was really, really funny. I noticed that there was a hierarchy on the forums – on the very bottom there were guests – like me – not respected by other users, able to only view base-level content and comment on that. Above them were normal accounts, people who could see higher tier things and post links in comments. Those were the accounts of people who proved themselves to not be a troll by posting civil and polite comments, reporting misbehaving people and by visiting the forum often.
Above those were the regulars – they were the core of the forum. They weren’t very numerous, but they uploaded content they discovered and considered amusing. They could start threads and were the soul and spirit of the website. Every user knew their names and they were respected.
I worked my way up the ranks – I visited the forum every day, viewed every post on it, funny or not, and commented on it if it was worth it. It wasn’t long before I was granted a standard account. I found out that there was a tier aspect to the site – lower rank accounts could only see lower rank content, the higher you got, the better the stuff you saw was. The mods – moderators, if you prefer – decided what content was good or not.
It was at that point that I learned about the other castes on the forum. There were the mods, of course, the artificers and just over them was the admin. The mods were regulars, but they could rate threads depending on just how funny they were. The artificers were those who made their own content. They were a real elite and getting messaged by them was an honour for every normal user. I see them as true artisans, artists even.
The admin was a mysterious figure. He never posted content, never messaged anyone, never left a comment or anything of the like.
Anyways, at that point I was just above the guest level and I wanted to be more than that. I posted all the good stuff I had saved over the years – not all of it was accepted, most of it was already seen and I was driven to find content that wasn’t seen by other users before.
I followed every rabbit hole on my side of internet, explored the elusive sites and seen some really fucked up stuff. Fucked up, but hysterical. I managed to find just enough of previously unseen hilarity to get promoted to moderator a few weeks ago. Now I saw just how much activity there was and how many people visited the forum. Not tens or hundreds, but thousands watched our content, and a large chunk of our viewer base wanted to post content of their own. Most of that was junk. Drivel. I refused that sort of shit and allowed only the highest quality works make their way to our boards. I banned degenerates who derived sexual pleasure off of some of our videos, we are not degenerates. That’s disgusting.
I also had access to almost the very best vids and pictures our site had to offer. There was no limit to us, nothing was sacred. Not children. Not the elderly. Not dignity. Not virtue. Not life.
There is another tier of content on Amusement Hub, but I don’t have access. It’s available only to content creators, you know. I’ve been trying to think
of something fun to upload and I had this little idea…
Oh, the recorder is working again. Thank God. I, I mean, player. Not recorder.
You look really sleepy. Hey, that’s alright. Here, lay on the couch, I’ll get you a pillow in no time at all. Now, where did I put my camera…